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quixote9 writes "Calorie restriction while maintaining nutrient levels has long been known to dramatically increase life spans. Very different lab animals, from worms to mice, live up to 50% longer (or even more) on the restricted diets. However, so far, nobody has been able to figure out how this works. Scientists at the Salk Institute have found a specific gene in worms (there's a very similar one in people) that is directly involved in the longevity effect. That opens up the interesting possibility that doctors may someday be able to activate that gene directly and we can live long and prosper . . . without giving up chocolate."

Two days ago, in a regular newspaper, I read that "A Gene Involved in Aging Has Been Found" and now, two days later on slashdot, I learnt that we have also discovered a longevity gene !
Science really goes at a fast speed nowadays.

I am of two minds on this. I'd like to enjoy a longer lifespan than I would otherwise expect and I would want my loved ones (and everyone in the world for that matter) to have it too. But if according to the wikipedia we are well over SIX THOUSAND MILLION people alive at the moment, the world would find itself in a much worse position if we stopped dieing and clearing the way for younger generations.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying. - Terry Pratchett, The Color of MagicAs nice as it would be to leave some sort of a lasting legacy behind, I would greatly prefer to be there myself. Even if Prestige-like technology existed to make an identical clone, memories and all, it would not be enough. Obviously if

Birth rates are already well below maintenance levels in most industrialized countries, and even China is set to see it's population peak soon due to the one child policy. The solution to the problem of too high growth is helping developing countries out of poverty.

We're maybe as little as a century away from actually seeing the worlds population shrinking unless we start increasing lifespans a lot faster than we have.

Wow, my first "flamebait":P Totally undeserved if we judge by the responses I got, which by the way were exactly the kind of discussion I wanted to have. Oh well, enough whining. I know that population rates decline on industrialized countries, but they don't hold the bulk of the population anyway. China alone has over a billion people, yes, but India has another and they have no such policy. And neither do many of the developing countries. So unfortunately it just seems like the weight of the population i

And another problem with that is that We The People like the way we live, whatever it may be, because that's the way we live. We grow attached to our culture and the longer we spend inside it, the harder it is for the majority to view it with a critical eye and weed out its issues. Then throw more people that learn and inherit that culture in the mix, and I think that nothing short of one of those fabled "inflection points" will modify it.

If "we" help the poor countries out of poverty and into a society like those of the industrialized nations where birth-rates pr. person are negative, would there still be food and raw materials on this planet left to run a society like that?

What is "Mainainence level"? Maintaining social security? Or maintaining rate of growth?

Maintaining raw population, meaning a growth rate greater than or equal to zero. Many first-world nations (notably, Japan and much of Europe) have more people dying than being born, resulting in negative population growth.

In general, education level and availability of technology correlate negatively with birth rate, and this holds true both between countries and between socio-economic groups within countries.

(...) the world would find itself in a much worse position if we stopped dieing and clearing the way for younger generations.

Well, that's the thing, we won't stop dying - we'll only stop dying of old age. There's still plenty of accidents and murders to keep the population under control. Also, I'm pretty sure that if you could actually have eternal life, you'll get bored of it eventually and will top yourself given that nature's no longer doing the job for you. And I'll bet that would happen before your 200th birthday.

I'd like to enjoy a longer lifespan than I would otherwise expect

I guess not all long lives are the same - having the body of a 20 year old for 100 years instead of, well, one is one thing, having the body of a 150 year old who would normally have died 80 years ago for 100 years is quite another. So be careful what you wish for when you ask for longer lifespans. Make sure you read the fine print first:)

Also, I'm pretty sure that if you could actually have eternal life, you'll get bored of it eventually and will top yourself given that nature's no longer doing the job for you. And I'll bet that would happen before your 200th birthday.

Either that, or after 200 years, they'll have figured out how to not be bored. Frankly, it's not that hard.

I can't remember when or where I read it but I'm pretty sure I read a SF story in which people with incredibly long lifespans would just regularly get their memories blanked so they could re-invent themselves.

having the body of a 150 year old who would normally have died 80 years ago for 100 years is quite another. So be careful what you wish for when you ask for longer lifespans. Make sure you read the fine print first

Well, i think living longer would be good, if some limitations on offspring would be created, something like that each parent is allowed to have 1 child. = a couple can have 2 children.Pros:- Less money spent on education since the productive years of each person would be much longer, just think of what the pay would be for a *nix admin with 120 years of experience that still have 80 years left until retirement:)- Less money spent on caring for the elderly, since people would probably choose to end their l

It's not the drugs that are the problem, it's our never-ending population growth! The more land we turn into farmland, the more kids we have, that again will need to turn new land into farmland, or squeeze even more out of what is allready there to stay alive, and have more kids that needs more farmland... and so on, so forth...

Seriously, we know that we will crack the secrets to long life at one point or another. We know that we want to maintain a high standards of living, and achieve self-realiszation. We want there to be wild nature left. We want there to be more species that rats, cockroaches, dogs and cats living alongside us.

It doesn't take a genious to see that a major pieces in the puzzle that is our long-term survival is population control, and we need to enact it now. Global warming is a small piece in comparison.

To those who wish to endulge, I'd stornly reccomend Daniel Quinn's excellend books 'Ishmael [amazon.co.uk]', and 'The Story of B'.

War generally has had little effect on population. WWII only killed 3% of the population of the countries involved (and had a subsequent population explosion). Compare to the black death which took out something like 30%.

The more land we turn into farmland, the more kids we have, that again will need to turn new land into farmland, or squeeze even more out of what is allready there to stay alive, and have more kids that needs more farmland... and so on, so forth...

That would explain why the amount of land farmed in North America has been falling for decades, and the population would be stable or shrinking were it not for immigration, yes?

The fact is that by the time I am old the "population crisis" will be under-population,

Population control would be impossible to create and maintain on a global scale; instead all we have to do is allow the natural course of supply and demand to naturally limit the population. The results WILL NOT be ideal and this mindset is somewhat callous but individual homo sapiens are meaningless on the scale of survival. As we are unable to support more people our populations will naturally be checked: diseases will run rampant, there will be massive clean water and food shortages which in turn will

Wait 'till you're 80, pensions have long since been abandoned, and you have to compete for food with twenty year-olds who have chips in their heads, and no sense of what it means to slow down and enjoy life. Longer lifespans aren't such a nice prospect, in a capitalist culture.

I am of two minds on this. I'd like to enjoy a longer lifespan than I would otherwise expect and I would want my loved ones (and everyone in the world for that matter) to have it too.

Skip the latter thought. That's why there are vampire novels.

Actually, I'm deadly serious. The reason Frankenstein made it into the diversity of the English literature canon is because it mythologized doubt about the rise of science at the end of the 19th century, right? I suggest it is possible the future canon may teach An

Well, since the study said it's about earthworms, I'll say that I'm of five pairs of hearts about it.

Seriously, though, if the average person loved and extra 35 years, the drain on the world's resources would be HUGE. And economically, we'd all have to work much, much longer in order to support our retirements, and the gap between rich and poor would increase. I'm not sure I'd be enthused with working for 90 years before retirement, and I don't know what widening the income gap

Well, "retirement age" is just a reflection of what point in your life you become:

1) able to financially support yourself for the rest of your life without continuing to work, and

2) possibly no longer valuable in the workforce (i.e. too expensive for the quality/quantity of work you can contribute)

Living longer would mean you need more money to support yourself in retirement, or that you need to delay retiring. The second point depends on what health state (and mental state) you're in at an older age.

Personally, I plan to retire as soon as possible - but there's no way I could support myself and wife/etc. for 80+ years on what I've saved to date!

Just stop working on jobs/things you don't like once you become financially secure enough. Better yet, start your own business or if that is too much stress just work what you like. That doesn't even have to be your field - could be charity or whatever.

Living longer would mean you need more money to support yourself in retirement, or that you need to delay retiring. The second point depends on what health state (and mental state) you're in at an older age.

I'm already planning for retirement such that I will be able to live off the interest alone, and in such a way that I won't be living off all the interest (so that the interest will grow with cost-of-living adjustments). That way, it won't matter how long I live past retirement - the longer I live, th

If we do live longer to say 150 and you retire at say 70 would you really want to spend 80 years doing nothing..

I'm more worried that things like Social Security, 401(k) redemption, and the like will get bumped up to say, 120 years. Lotsa people investing and paying into systems, the fruits of which they will ultimately never see.

Our current life expectancy is already putting such a burden on our social security system. When will people realize that quality of life != quantity of life? How is our great-grandkids' generation supposed to support millions of supercentenarians?

Don't worry! Goverments all around the world are already working on this problem. Lower prison terms, sensible immigration policies, and humane international policies are already there. More to come...

Our current life expectancy is already putting such a burden on our social security system. When will people realize that quality of life != quantity of life? How is our great-grandkids' generation supposed to support millions of supercentenarians?

Well, the point here is not to prolongue the life for the sake of staying merely alive, i.e. losing your mind and control over body functions, but instead staying *young*. What good is it to become 250 years old, when the last 180 years of that you spend in th

... or just retire and live self-sufficient after I accumulated enough money

If people end up living to 200 or 250 (obviously, whilst retaining their faculties) why would they necessarily "work-then-retire"?

Why not work until you have enough put by to have 5/10/15 years doing something you like doing, then work a bit more, then have more time off. This way you wouldn't have to work until you are 100 before you could enjoy yourself! Much better to work until you are, say, 30, then have 5 years off, then w

Would be my favorite idea. Work in a field for a couple of years, then learn new/other stuff, then maybe change the entire area of work.

Another thing is, that with people living longer (not to mention forever) the monetary system would break as everyone would be able to accumulate wealth and become filthy rich over a long enough period of time. Hence, inflation will have to rise in a similar way -- or we just switch over to a new system where unused, deposited money decays instead of accumulates.

If I could get a few more years earlier in life while I still have gobs of energy and relatively no responsibilities... Suddenly four years for a degree wouldn't seem like a huge investment. A year of study abroad in Japan wouldn't be an issue. I might have two hobbies. Long term investments would make more sense. I would take more time to learn more things, aquire more skills, and experience a broader life.

In short, I think living longer would make it a lot easier to live sensibly. As it is, if I have to weight the risks of investing time or taking something I can do now, I end up taking the most courageous and risky courses possible.

I don't think it's a relative thing either. Not in the sense that, regardless of whatever time-span I had, I would always wish, "Wow, if only I had twice as much." In an absolute sense, I just don't think I'll ever have the years to do all the things I want to. It makes it seem really pointless to invest eight years into something (for instance, undergrad + med-school) when it's such a large investment that, by the time I get done, I will have lost many opportunities of youth, but I couldn't put such a thing off because, who wants to invest eight years in something that will only pay off for twenty?

Humanity is robbed. People live crazy lives because we are going to die too soon to live fully, so life is futile. Damn whatever you recognize as the determining factor of our longevity. The light is green to research like this.

Humanity is robbed. People live crazy lives because we are going to die too soon to live fully, so life is futile. Damn whatever you recognize as the determining factor of our longevity. The light is green to research like this.

Yes but the piecemeal approach of medicine won't get there fast enough to work for me. The only real possibility I can see is transhumanism.

A few years ago, for various reasons, I started eating much healthier. More whole grains, more fruits and veggies, much less preprocessed food, less fried food, etc, etc. I didn't go vegan or even just vegetarian, but I do eat less meat than I used to. (And I only eat red meat when I have an active craving for it.)

You know what? Eating healthy takes a little more effort and attention, but it actually tastes a hell of a lot better.

Just walking into a fast-food place now actually makes me a little nau

Why do I have the feeling that this study was funded by the Ira Howard foundation?

Offhand I can't think of an example of Lazarus Long passing on his longetivity trait to his decendents. There were his two clone sisters but both were heavily engineered. So IMHO the foundation failed, because few people directly lived long lives as a result of their efforts.

BBC article has a link [bbc.co.uk] to another BBC article about an example of a man who followed this diet:

On a typical day, I will eat an oatmeal-based recipe for breakfast, which is about 455 calories and it gives me about half of my daily nutrients.

I don't eat lunch - after this breakfast I just don't feel hungry - so that leaves me about 1,350 calories for my evening meal, which is a lot.

This is very close to the dieting of the Muslims when they fast (obligatory fast during Ramadhan or voluntary fast during the month of Sha'ban, on Mondays and Thursdays, on 13,14 and 15th of each Islamic month or other recommended days).

We have a breakfast (Suhur) before dawn and do not eat or drink until sunset. After sunset we have a usual meal (Iftar). The only difference to the diet described in this BBC article is that we do not drink while Mr. Cavanaugh does.

Not eating/drinking while the sun is up has little to do with a low calorie diet.

Most of my colleagues who follow ramadan actually gain weight during it as they eat copiously of high calorie food while the sun is down. A big breakfast to tide you through the day & a big, though late, dinner annihilates any gain you might get by not eating during the day.

That's a bad way of doing things, not eating all day slows your metabolism, during the day your body will break down your muscle mass to feed itself. Then when you eat in the evening it will all be converted to fat.

that when confronted with the possibility of a greatly increased lifespan, say a hundred years extra, so few actually want it. Ask some people and watch their initial reaction. The ones I've queried have almost invariably argued that it would become boring.IMHO this stems from a belief that zest for life is NOT a biological effect, but rather a result of inexperience.People grow jaded with age, many even grown comfortable with their own mortality.

Reduced food intake as a result of dietary restriction increases the lifespan of a wide variety of metazoans and delays the onset of multiple age-related pathologies. Dietary restriction elicits a genetically programmed response to nutrient availability that cannot be explained by a simple reduction in metabolism or slower growth of the organism. In the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the transcription factor PHA-4 has an essential role in the embryonic development of the foregut and is orthologous to genes encoding the mammalian family of Foxa transcription factors, Foxa1, Foxa2 and Foxa3. Foxa family members have important roles during development, but also act later in life to regulate glucagon production and glucose homeostasis, particularly in response to fasting. Here we describe a newly discovered, adult-specific function for PHA-4 in the regulation of diet-restriction-mediated longevity in C. elegans. The role of PHA-4 in lifespan determination is specific for dietary restriction, because it is not required for the increased longevity caused by other genetic pathways that regulate ageing.

The paper has a supplement PDF [nature.com] which unfortunately you won't be able to see unless your institution is subscribed to Nature. The figure S2 in it is an alignment of PHA-4 protein product to 3 most similar proteins in human. Some domains called forkhead are 85% identical, but really good alignment covers only about 90 of 506 residues of PHA-4 protein product. From my experience with proteins that qualify as orthologs, this alignment does not qualify. Homologene [nih.gov] does not have a family of orthologs containing that worm product as well.

It does not mean that FOXA family does not do something for our longer lives, it just mean that article does not prove that via sequence similarity. Since I enjoy "trolling" I would add that (once again) Nature capitalizes on the subject importance and publishes articles with overstretching conclusions.

So if we live 50% slower (because of energy deprivation), we actually live 50% longer. <SARCASM> Whoah, what a great dicovery... </SARCASM> It's exactly the opposite of Achilles' choice: either to be a great and famous hero and die young or to live a long happy life without any lasting fame. We all know how it ended.

True, but imagine the population going from slowly rising in this country to rapidly rising, due to a fall-off in death rates... here in the country where each individual makes a maximum impact on the enviornment, towards energy usage, and towards waste production.Of course it'll level off after everyone gets the treatment, but the new established 'level' will be higher than it otherwise would be.

I still think the emphasis should be on living better, not living longer. Do we really want the retirement age

Interesting study, but I'm always a bit leery of aging studies done in these worms (C. elegans), especially those which involve caloric restriction. Worms have the ability to follow an entirely different developmental path under certain conditions. Thus, normally, worms progress to adulthood and live a couple weeks. But if they are STARVED, at a young stage they shift into what is called a "dauer" state--they stop growing and can live for months and months. This is totally different than just living longer or stopping aging at a normal state--they are entering an entirely different developmental stage, which they normally would never see. Humans, of course, have no such developmental path. So with aging studies dealing with caloric restriction in worms, you have to wonder if they're studying something relevant to mammals, or if they are manipulating this worm-specific dauer pathway. It almost seems more likely to me that they would be affecting something to do with this dauer state. It will be interesting to see what happens when they follow up in mice.

actually that is not the case, calorie restriction (CR) makes you live longer with a positive impact on your health - including heart diseases. the only issue is the social and psychological impact such a restrictive diet has on your life. the alternative is going on an alternate day diet, or using these longlivety genes turn-on's, like resveratol. these have non of the problems - instant extra 30 years!

"You can have my extended life gene when you pry it from my cold dead hands."

Seriously, if you want to extend life, ban fructose as a sweetener. Unlike regular sugar, fructose blocks the hormones that make you "feel full" so you continue eating and drinking (esp. soda pop). 2/3 of the population is overweight, and a LOT of those are obese. Of course, a fructose ban would result in lower sales of all junk foods (because you'll "feel full" sooner), so expect it to be fought by the manufacturers, who're just fattening you up fo the slaughter.

Don't eat junk food; you'll die. Don't people get tired of finding things that kill them? Every day on the BBC I see either "gene found that makes old people back out of their driveway too quickly" or "toasters linked to prostate cancer".

The life expectancy these days is longer than it has ever been, so how about spending that time doing something other than wondering how you're going to die?

Only in sports drinks is the glucose content of HFCS higher than that of in sucrose.

The wikipedia article also mentions that the most common sweetener for processed foods and soft drinks is HFCS 55 (55/45), which isn't much greater in fructose content than the 50/50 of sucrose. However, they don't mention whether HFCS 90 or HFCS 55 is cheaper to process, which would make that the more prevalent variety. Regardless, it's safe to assume that HFCS foods have more fructose than if they were to have used sugar instead.

I'm not disagreeing that obesity is a result of eating too much and exercising too little. But what we eat also contributes to our health. And consuming large amounts of HFCS through processed foods doesn't help.

They're maximizing their profits - a dollar in hand today is worth more than a prospective dollar a year down the road, plus, over your (now shorter due to obesity) life-span, you'll end up spending several times more on pop and junk food because the fructose turns off the production of the "I'm not hungry any more" hormones.

A government-mandated switch from fructose back to ordinary sugar would cost them more than half their sales, but it would save tens of billions in health-care costs every year...

Fructose depresses leptin and insulin levels. Leptin is normally produced when you eat, and this triggers the "ok, I'm no longer hungry" signal in your brain so you stop eating. Lowering the leptin level causes you to still feel hungry, even after you've eaten. Switching from fructose to sucrose will allow your body to regulate itself better.

Its probably going to take some major lawsuits (and bankruptcies) to fix this problem...

The first thing I think of when you mention fructose is fruit - a healthy source of fructose. Of course, most people probably get their fructose from high fructose corn syrup - not so healthy. I'm just pointing out that although we probably consume too much fructose, you don't want to avoid fruit in an effort to cut fructose out of your diet altogether - just try to avoid all products that contain high fructose corn syrup. Combine that with avoiding all products that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable

While guns increase average deaths, in specific cases, ownership of a gun increases life span.

If two sane people had had guns at VT or Kileen, Tx Luby's, a lot less people would have died.

However, the average citizen tends to get angry, or has a clever child that gets a hold of the gun, or is just joking around, etc. etc. and so we get more total deaths from having a lot of guns out there.

---All that being said. The reason for the second amendment is to protect us from the government when it *inevitably* goes evil on us. They always do. They always will. When they do- hundreds of thousands or evil millions of people die really fast.

So it is just a question of how long before you need guns to protect yourself.

That doesn't change the basic reasons why the provision is there. We have lots of provisions and laws that become dated. Unfortunately, I agree with you that, despite their original intentions, at this point the combination of surveillance cameras, weaponry, and a fine sense of just how much they can take from us before we object means it is unlikely we could do anything.On other hand- if you have a gun, you can probably get a machine gun. And indirect attacks so successful in Iraq would be equally effec

Someone I had worked with at the National Institutes of Health had looked in to those starvation diets, and saw that the animnals total oxygen use, be it the starved rat, or non-starved rat, were roughly the same at the end of their life. The fatter rats just used theirs up faster.

Remember, oxygen is a fairly corrosive molecule, and is not necessarily good for you.

The 70-year-old said that he needs to go to the toilet first thing in the morning, and it takes him 10 minutes just to get out of bed, and another half-hour in the can, so he has to get up at 6:30 if he's going to make it for breakfast at 7:00

The 80-year-old said "You think that's bad? It takes me half an hour to get out of bed, and an HOUR in the toilet, so I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning if I'm going to eat breakfast at 7:00. Heck, I have to take half a viagra so I don't end up pissing on my slippers!

The 90-year-old says "You young'uns... I wake up at 6:55, have a piss, take a shit, and I'm all done by 7:00... then I have breakfast, while they change my sheets."